Experiencing the sharing economy: Camptoo

This holiday I wanted to try camping with my family. We considered a caravan, a tent and a camper. Because we do not own a car, we would have had to rent a car ánd a caravan. As it was still quite cold, the camper won over a tent. I started searching on some different platforms like SnappCar, GoBoony and Camptoo - all peer-to-peer rental platforms. I like the idea of going on holiday with a privately owned camper. It's a more personal experience than renting an anonymous camper somewhere. Interestingly, I met some campers over and over again on every platform. I picked Camptoo, as they had the most choice in offering in the area. We picked a Mercedes-Benz from 1998. Not the youngest beast, but still quite functional. Prices for the selected camper started from €59, for our period, the price was €82 per night.  The selection and booking process was very straightforward and easy. We had the chance to chat with the owner before making the final selection, which was handy.

The owner offered us the opportunity to come and meet the camper a week before, which was very good to shape our ideas of the holiday and prepare as we had never used a camper before. This turned out to be the biggest challenge too. We're used to driving in all sorts of cars and you know how to operate everything. But a camper has many more specifics. Like how to open and close the shades, how to turn on the heater, which buttons to use and which ones to leave alone.

The camper was fully equipped. All kitchen equipment was there, comfy chairs for sitting on the camping, a drying rack, table and even some games to play. All we had to bring was our personal luggage and bedding. Bonus: we brought two bikes, so we didn't have to move the camper every time we wanted to get some bread from the nearest village.

The coolest thing about a holiday with the camper is that you do not have to set up anything, once on the campsite. Just open the doors, put out the chairs and open a beer, done! What we had to get used to, was the shaky ride and as said, the operation of the camper-specifics. We only managed to turn on the heater after the first, very cold, night. There were some specific instructions on which shades or windows nót to use .... also difficult to remember all. In the same line, there was a button that apparently we were not supposed to use, but we did not know. This caused the battery to be flat shortly after we arrived. The camping offered to start us up upon departure, so we did not worry about it anymore. But upon departure that option did not work and the camper had no start-up cables. We had to get road assistance to help us depart.

With this experience we learnt how the insurance worked. The campers are insured by the owners and details are on the info page of each caravan or camper. There is an own risk of € 1000,- which is the deposit you pay. You can lower the own risk to zero with an add-on insurance for € 8,- per day. But this insurance only covers accidents caused by us. Luckily the owner had road assistance on the insurance; otherwise we would not have been covered for this.

One strange thing; the campers were bookable per day with a check-in time of 15:00 and a check-out time of 10:00, like hotels. For campers this seems unlogic to us. As you are likely to travel with the camper, it is more logic to depart early. A 24 hour rental, like car rental would have been more logic. Other than this, I would totally recommend the experience and the platform and we might travel this way again soon!